CWA Newsmakers

Louis E. Moore, who has been CWA’s first and only international affairs director, has announced his decision to retire, effective Jan. 4, 1999. Moore, 67, a former CWA local officer in Santa Cruz, Calif., was appointed research director for the Postal Telegraph and Telephone International, now known as Communications International, in 1965, stationed in Lima, Peru. By 1974, Moore had been named PTTI’s Inter-American Representative by PTTI General Secretary Stefan Nedzynski and was based in San Jose, Costa Rica. Over the years in Latin and Central America, part of Moore’s job was to direct organizing activities. In 1980, citing the tremendous expansion of telephone industry business interests throughout the world, CWA created the position of international affairs director and President Emeritus Glenn E. Watts named Moore to the job. Fluent in Spanish, Moore was a steward and vice president of Local 9428, Santa Cruz, before the PTTI appointment. He first went to work for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in 1956 as a switching technician.

Stephen F. DeRespino, a member of NABET-CWA Local 51, and union friends in the Phoenix, Ariz. area have reached out as far as NABET-CWA Local 16 in New York City to extend a helping hand to Mike Powers, second from left, a part-time technician with ABC Sports. DeRespino says he found out on Oct. 10 at a pre-strike sporting event at Sun Devils Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., that Powers had been diagnosed with a form of cancer that prevented him from working the Notre Dame-Arizona State University football game. By the end of the day, DeRespino said he had collected enough donations to buy several hundred dollars in savings bonds for Powers’ two daughters, Nikki Sue and Kasey Lee. “This is what unionism is all about,” DeRespino says.

Shirley Brazell, president of CWA Local 3706 in Columbia, S.C., was recently named South Carolina’s “Labor Person of the Year” at the state’s 42nd AFL-CIO Convention. Her local hosted CWA’s 1997 National Operators Conference. Members of the local executive board nominated Brazell, lauding her “dedicated service to the union movement and the communities of South Carolina,” adding: “We are proud of the leadership she so unselfishly gives daily — not just to us but to all working people.”

Top officers of CWA Local 1103, Port Chester, N.Y. were recently honored by separate Democratic Party committees. Bob McCracken, president of the local, was named Labor Man of the Year by the Westchester Democratic Committee, reported Local Secretary-Treasurer Douglas Sheahan. McCracken’s assistant, Chris Cutter, received the same honor from the Putnam County Democratic Committee. McCracken has also won praise for his work on behalf of persons with disabilities. The National Business & Disability Council has tapped McCracken as winner of its 1998 Labor Representative of the Year award. CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, who presented the award, said McCracken redoubled his efforts on behalf of persons with disabilities after he suffered a stroke in 1993. “He responded not with defeat or self pity, but instead organized the licensed practical nurses and technical unit employees at the very hospital in which he was recovering,” Cohen noted.

George L. Espada may be trying to show that you can do and have it all: A lifelong Republican, he’s a member of the East Harlem, N.Y., Chamber of Commerce and CWA Local 1183 of New York City. Espada, recently featured in a personality profile in a New York City-area newspaper, comes by his union membership as an employee of the city’s Board of Elections, where he’s an administrative assistant. Each year he conducts a toy drive for the poor and homeless children in his neighborhood.